Slate: What Seth Stevenson learned at the Wendelstedt School for Umpires.

Slate: What Seth Stevenson learned at the Wendelstedt School for Umpires.

Long ago, between college and fatherhood, I was obsessed with minor-league baseball and historic ballparks, seeing games in Bradenton and Durham, Dunedin and Melbourne, Little Rock and St. Catherines, Wilmington and Greensboro. After a year or so of cubicle life, I was entranced by Harry Wendlestedt's ad in the back of The Sporting News and daydreamed about calling balls and strikes in a Pioneer League game under a cool and cloudless Big Sky. I never took the plunge, but Seth Stevenson did, and wrote about it for Slate:

"I first visited the Harry Wendelstedt School for Umpires as a 24-year-old Newsweek reporter back in January 2000. I'd begged my editor to send me because I'd been floored by the opportunity the school promised: Take a five-week course and, if you finish around the top 20 percent of your class, get hired straight into the minor leagues--calling outs and balks and ground-rule doubles in small-town ballparks across the country. Could it really be that simple to launch a career in the national pastime? ...

"I observed the school for a couple of days, touring the facilities in Daytona Beach, Florida, and writing a short squib for Newsweek's front section. It wasn't nearly enough. As I watched those students in their dorky, pressed-and-creased umpire slacks, jogging across infields and yelling stuff, and making weirdly specific arm gestures, I yearned to don the protective equipment and get behind the plate myself. Heck, what if I was a natural?...

"Because authority depends on the perceptions of those who are subject to it, umpires are obsessed with maintaining a commanding presence. Our voices were to be loud, thick, and monotone, our manner laconic, our faces untroubled. We were expected to have our clothes clean, ironed, squared away. We were directed to a local tailor who would hem our pants. A surprising amount of discussion centered on whether to tuck our warm-up windbreakers into our waistbands."